Transcendence
by Xairathan
Summary: Written for a friend, prompt was "in an AU where everyone can see their red string of fate, someone's extends past the sky."


Sometime during the age of 13, every human child discovers that a red string has been tied to their wrist during the night. Attempts to remove it prove the string intangible. They'll tell someone, often a parent, and that parent will explain that the red string will lead them to their soulmate, and if they're lucky, maybe they'll be close.

At the age of 13, Asuka Langley Soryu's string extends up into the stars.

It's easy for her to ignore it, in a sense. When she walks, she doesn't have to worry about seeing it randomly drift across her path, indicating that her soulmate is moving. The string just drifts in and out of her vision like a rather large, persistent floater.

Over time, she learns to ignore it.

Friends ask her about her string. She lies and says it stretches far beyond the horizon. Such occurrences aren't uncommon. Maybe later she'll try and find whoever's at the other end, she says, and her friends are satisfied.

Or maybe, Asuka thinks, maybe there's no one at the other end, and Asuka's string only goes up because it has nowhere else to go. And where Asuka will sometimes be walking along and spot a passerby's eyes dart suddenly to the side, Asuka will never suffer from that same problem. Her string is stationary, predictable. She has no reason to expect anything else.

One day, in her first year at college, she meets a boy in one of her classes. His eyes are like hers: staring forward, never darting to the sides. Occasionally, when the lectures are boring and there's nothing better to do, he stares at the ceiling. It isn't the stare of someone trapped for another forty-five minutes: rather, he appears to be looking for something. Asuka approaches him, and there's a brief exchange.

"Yours goes up?" Asuka asks. She doesn't want to elaborate any further than that.

And she doesn't need to. The boy nods, then gathers his things and shoves them hastily in his bag. When he reaches the door, he turns back. "I'm Shinji," he says.

"Asuka," Asuka replies, and Shinji skitters out the door.

They talk again the following week after class. "Do you think there's actually anyone up there?" Shinji asks. "Like... aliens?"

"I wouldn't be surprised," Asuka says. "But what kind of alien would get a human soulmate?"

"I don't know."

And they don't speak of it again.

Not until another day late in the year, when the hold of winter has just touched the earth and carpeted it with snow. Asuka's string jerks; her head snaps instinctively to follow the foreign motion, just in time to see Shinji slowly turn his head as well.

A moment passes. The string doesn't move. Shinji turns back, and his gaze meets Asuka's. Asuka nods without prompting, and that's enough to tell Shinji that she's seen what he has.

They wait until the class ends, then set off in the direction of their strings without saying a word. There are things that need to be said, but that they refuse to vocalize. After a lifetime of stasis, an active string is something to be pursued: what if the being at the other end retreats back upwards, or they get killed? These are strange thoughts, but no stranger than Asuka and Shinji's journey up into the wooded area behind the college, far beyond the swimming pool and the greenhouse.

About half an hour after they've left the paved concrete roads, there's a shift. Asuka steps left, Shinji steps right. They pause, uncertain, and look up. "Mine goes this way," Shinji says, and points up into the forest. His voice is hoarse, no doubt from the excitement, or perhaps the exertion. Asuka checks her own string again: it leads away from Shinji's.

"Mine goes that way," Asuka says with a jerk of her head.

Shinji lowers his eyes, nods. Of course they'd run into something like this, where they must continue their journeys alone. "If we don't find them before midnight, turn around?" he asks.

"If there's no other choice," Asuka replies. She knows neither of them will be turning back, should night fall upon their search. This feels like a once in a lifetime chance, and it might be just that.

"Well," Shinji says. "Good luck."

He turns and continues into the forest, his blue jacket disappearing amongst the trees. Asuka doesn't watch him go; she pivots on her heel and continues through the deepening snow drifts.

The sun dips low, its light choked out by the multitude of trees, but still Asuka can see her thread before her, bobbing along like a flurry in the wind. She's close to the end now, she can feel it in her bones, a faint warmth to combat the chill. She wonders if Shinji's also close to finding whoever it is that's on the other end of his string, wonders if fate would be so cruel as to only reward one of them.

Asuka jumps over a fallen log and stumbles into a circular clearing. It's freshly made, if the tens of felled trees are any indicator; at the center of it is a patch of earth devoid of snow. And there in the clearing, a shimmering: a faint disturbance of the air that Asuka wouldn't have noticed had her string not lead right to it.

The disturbance drifts closer. Asuka stumbles back, her feet tangling in one of the many branches. She falls onto her back, attempting to scramble away, but the disturbance looms over her. There's a feeling like static running over the skin of her cheek, over her lips. A moment later she's being pulled to her feet by a pale hand, and the disturbance is gone.

Instead, there's a girl there, just shorter than Asuka. Her hair is a silvery-blue color, like that of an icicle, and her eyes are a deep red. She regards Asuka curiously, ignoring the cold and the lack of clothes on her body. "Are you who I'm looking for?" the girl asks.

The best Asuka can offer is a shrug. It seems as though her mouth has forgotten how to work; it hangs open slightly, having abandoned any attempt at coherent speech.

"Yes," the girl says, answering her own question. "You are the one I came here for. My name is Rei. Can you understand me?"

"Uh." Asuka blinks, shaking her head to try and regain control of herself. "Yeah. I can understand you. Are you sure you've got the right person?"

"It is you." Rei holds up her hand and makes a gesture that escapes Asuka, but she can see the other end of the red thread on Rei's wrist. "Since you are not correcting me, you must be."

"I don't understand," Asuka says. "What are you doing here?"

"I could not find my counterpart on the world I was born on. Logically, it meant my counterpart was born on another world."

"And is that uncommon?"

"It is rare, yes, but not unheard of. I came here with one other who appeared to have the same destination as me."

"Oh." Asuka's eyes wander the clearing, searching for another twisting of the air, for any sign of Shinji. From the paths they took when they parted ways, it would seem that Shinji's partner has landed far from this place. "So you've found me. Now what?"

"I don't know," says Rei. "When I left to come here, the elders who sent me said I would know what to do once I had found you."

"Well, you can put some clothes on."

"Clothes? On our world, we have no need for such things."

"Unless you want to get stared at and probably arrested, you'll wear something. Here." Asuka shrugs off her heavy outer coat and offers it to Rei, who takes it and holds it in front of her. "Just put your arms through the holes."

"Interesting. Thank you."

Rei slips into Asuka's coat, leaving the front unbuttoned. The sleeves droop an inch from where they end, shielding Rei's hands from the cold, though Asuka doesn't think she needs it. "You're doing it wrong," she sighs, though there's no frustration in her tone. Perhaps it's the exhilaration of finally finding her soulmate, or just the novelty of this entire situation. She walks forward and with trembling fingers does up the buttons on Rei's coat. "There. Better."

"Wait," Rei says, extending a sleeve in Asuka's direction. "I do not know your name."

"I'm Asuka. Nice to meet you Rei, I guess."

"Yes. It is nice to meet you." Rei turns her head, taking in the forest and the night sky above, and the little white cloud of vapor that her breath makes in front of her. "This is such a curious planet."

"You'll have to tell me all about it," Asuka says. "From what you're saying, your home sounds pretty boring."

"It is not, though it will take me a long time to explain it to you."

"We have time. We're partners, right?" Asuka chuckles, then grabs Rei's sleeve and begins pulling her along. "Don't answer that. Come here. I want to show you something."

"What is it?"

"Just come with me. You'll see."

Together they leave the clearing behind, following Asuka's footprints back down the hill. Asuka notes that Rei's feet are still bare, but she doesn't seem to be suffering because of the cold. She wonders if Rei's used to it, or if she simply doesn't feel like a human does.

They come at last to a place where the trees grow thinner, close to where Asuka and Shinji split apart. "Here," Asuka says, and pulls them away from the trail of her tracks. "Look."

Between the leafless branches of the trees there is a glimmer of gold. Rei pushes past the trunks and wanders to the edge of the hill, staring down at the buildings below.

"That's called a city," Asuka says. "We live in them. They light up at night."

"Like the stars?" says Rei.

"Well... kind of, I guess."

"I see." Rei turns to Asuka, eyes settling on her face with a smile. "This is a beautiful world, Asuka. I am glad that I was able to find you here."

"Yeah, well..." Asuka sighs and reaches for Rei's sleeve, pulling it up past her wrist so she can twine their fingers together. "I'm glad you came here, so I can share it with you."


End file.
